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Karl Rove's American Crossroads spent $104 million this cycle with a 1.29% return on investment.

If you happen to be a liberal with a taste for schadenfreude, you've likely watched Karl Rove's excruciating live meltdown on Fox News as the conservative station declared Ohio, and therefore the presidency, for Barack Obama on election night. Perhaps you've also read the comments on his Wednesday night Washington Post op-ed, in which he pinned Obama's victory partly on "an act of God", Hurricane Sandy (spoiler alert: the comments include terms like 'snake oil salesman').

But it isn't you coastal lefties chortling at Jon Stewart's Rove takedown who deserved answers from the former Bush spinner this week. Almost one third of the $104 million Rove's American Crossroads super PAC spent this election cycle came from just five members of the Forbes rich list:

1. Harold Simmons: the Texas oilman, his wife and his company Contran collectively gave $19.5 million to Rove's group.

2. Robert Rowling: the Dallas investor and owner of the Omni hotels and Gold's Gym chains threw in $5 million total to Rove through his TRT Holdings.

3. Joseph Craft: the Oklahoma oil tycoon spent $3.35 million total on Rove's group, through both his own trust and his family company Alliance Resource Partners.

4. Jerrold Perenchio: the one-time Univision chief gave American Crossroads $2.5 million through his media investment firm Chartwell partners.

5. B. Wayne Hughes: the founder of self-storage giant Public Storage and thoroughbred horse breeder may have had a premonition this time around, giving just $1 million to Rove's group, compared to the $3.25 million he doled out for the 2010 midterm elections.

Other billionaire donors to American Crossroads included Kenny Troutt, Craig McCaw, Ken Griffin and Warren Stephens.

As transparency watchdog the Sunlight Foundation calculated, American Crossroads' super-rich investors including these five saw only a 1.29% return on their investment. Compare that dismal figure to left-leaning political group Majority PAC, who counted billionaires George Soros and James Simons as backers: they saw an 87.86% return on the cash they spent backing Democratic candidates and opposing Republicans.

While Rove doesn't seem publicly contrite, he and his American Crossroads team have been in touch with his top donors since Wednesday morning, said his public affairs guru Jonathan Collegio. The American Crossroads spokesman added that these billionaires are grateful to have funded anti-Obama attack ads that helped Romney get further than he otherwise would have in swing states.

"Folks are disappointed with the results, but that doesn't mean they're dissatisfied," Collegio said. "President Obama overspent Mitt Romney on ads by $154 million, and that's probably understating the disparity because some of Romney's ads were placed late in the game. Our donors are pleased because had American Crossroads' ads not been there to bridge the gap, I don't think we would've been so close in places like Ohio and Florida."

Collegio said that Rove's super-rich backers have been kept in the loop throughout the election. Now, he and his team will prepare a report to be distributed among donors by the end of the year. "We've been communicating to them so they're aware of what we did and how we did it," he says. "There's this misconception: it's not like their money went into a black box."

American Crossroads doesn't expect its billionaire backers to jump ship anytime soon. Said Collegio: "We're dusting ourselves off and figuring out how to move forward."